be amongst us, free, acquitted, triumphant before the night!"

"Ha!" said Madeline, as if suddenly roused by the thought into new life:-
-"Ha! let us hasten to find your words true. Yes! yes!--if it should be
so--if it should. And," added she, in a hollow voice, (the enthusiasm
checked,) "if it were not for my dreams, I might believe it would be so:-
-But--come--I am ready now!"

The carriage went slowly through the crowd that the fame of the
approaching trial had gathered along the streets, but the blinds were
drawn down, and the father and daughter escaped that worst of tortures,
the curious gaze of strangers on distress. Places had been kept for them
in court, and as they left the carriage and entered the fatal spot, the
venerable figure of Lester, and the trembling and veiled forms that clung
to him, arrested all eyes. They at length gained their seats, and it was
not long before a bustle in the court drew off attention from them. A
buzz, a murmur, a movement, a dread pause! Houseman was first arraigned
on his former indictment, acquitted, and admitted evidence against Aram,
who was thereupon arraigned. The prisoner stood at the bar! Madeline
gasped for breath, and clung, with a convulsive motion, to her sister's
arm. But presently, with a long sigh she recovered her self-possession,
and sat quiet and silent, fixing her eyes upon Aram's countenance; and
the aspect of that countenance was well calculated to sustain her
courage, and to mingle a sort of exulting pride, with all the strained
and fearful acuteness of her sympathy. Something, indeed, of what he had
suffered, was visible in the prisoner's features; the lines around the
mouth in which mental anxiety generally the most deeply writes its
traces, were grown marked and furrowed; grey hairs were here and there
scattered amongst the rich and long luxuriance of the dark brown locks,
and as, before his imprisonment, he had seemed considerably younger than